Growth of County’s Exports Slows in ’96
Orange County’s exports grew again in 1996, but at a slower pace than in the previous year, according to a new government report.
Merchandise export sales in the county rose 3.3% last year, to $8.31 billion, the U.S. Commerce Department said. Orange County’s ranking as the 13th largest exporter among 253 metropolitan areas studied remained unchanged.
In 1995, the county’s exports surged 19.4%, to $8 billion.
The slower growth last year is part of a national trend, said Paul Tambakis, director of the Commerce Department’s Orange County District Export Assistance Center.
“It’s difficult to sustain that kind of performance year to year,” he said.
He noted that since the agency began tracking metropolitan area export data four years ago, overseas sales by Orange County firms have risen 47%, from $5.65 billion in 1993.
Despite the flattening growth, some sectors experienced strong gains in international trade last year.
Sales of electric and electronic equipment rose 14.7%, to $2.52 billion. Double-digit increases were also registered in chemical products, fabricated metal, apparel, refined petroleum products, printing and publishing, textile mill products, leather goods and lumber and wood products.
But a few industries saw trade levels decline. The biggest drop was in primary metals, which plunged 78.5% to $73.6 million.
Exports of industrial machinery and computers fell 3%, to $2.26 billion. Tambakis said it’s unclear what products accounted for the decrease, since the category includes everything from computers to industrial furnaces and welding equipment.
Some industries have encountered snags in getting their products into foreign markets.
David Anast, publisher of the Biomedical Market newsletter in Costa Mesa, said the 1996 trade data reflects the bottleneck local companies faced trying to get their medical products approved for export by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
“The ripple effect of the backlog that had existed for several years is that, down the road, it sandbagged the ability of companies to export more,” Anast said. “Competitors from Germany and Japan ate their lunch.”
The good news, he said, is that the backlog of requests to the FDA has now been worked through, and that should be reflected in the 1997 trade numbers. He predicted explosive growth in the following two years, in part because there are now twice as many medical manufacturers locally as there were 10 years ago, and they are now getting their products approved and into foreign markets at a faster pace.
“It can only get better,” he said.
